


Brothers

by deathishauntedbyhumans



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (they're not on a boat this time rip), Childhood Memories, Drabble, Fearamid, Feelings, Hugging, Memories, Memory Loss, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Canon, Post-Gravity Falls, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, Recovered Memories, Regaining Memories, Two Old Men Talking About Feelings, Weirdmageddon, experiment 78
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 19:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12514368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathishauntedbyhumans/pseuds/deathishauntedbyhumans
Summary: Stan remembers everyone but Ford. Ford tries to remind him of who he is.





	Brothers

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one day... I had the idea in the morning around 9am, and I finished it at 4:30pm. 
> 
>  
> 
> ...yeah.

Everything seems to be going well with Stanley’s memory. He recognises Waddles, Soos, the kids… It’s more than Ford was hoping for, that was for sure. The kids are thrilled; Mabel is no longer close to tears and is giggling instead, Dipper is grinning at his Grunkle like this is the most fascinating thing he’s ever witnessed. And it probably is, to that effect. Yes, everything is going just fine… That is, until Stan turns towards him, frowns, and goes, “But who the heck are you?” 

Ford sees the way the kids’ faces darken, the nervous look on Soos’. He’s sure his own smile has frozen in place. He hadn’t survived the multiverse by freezing, though, so he balls up his fear and hurt inside his chest and locks it away before reaching out and patting Stan on the shoulder. Stan flinches. He doesn’t miss it. 

“I’m your brother,” he tells him, just a hint of desperation slipping through. His gaze darts towards the kids pointedly before he makes eye contact with Stan again, and somehow, somehow, those damn conman instincts have stayed with Stan because Ford can see that he doesn’t believe him, but he nods anyways and lets a big grin break out across his face as he looks down at the kids. 

“My brother!” he exclaims boisterously, and Mabel is laughing again, and Dipper sighs in relief, and Stan is squeezing the two kids in his lap. “Right! Of course!”

Mabel cuddles close and tells him that she knew everything would be alright in the end. Ford isn’t oblivious; he sees the way Stan’s eyes flick over to him uncertainly before he hugs Mabel tight and then releases her to rub his fist into her hair. She squeals with laughter at that. Ford swallows his desire to step in and be a part of the family, a part of the laughter and the light and the fun.

The kids have long gone to bed by the time Stan approaches him. Ford has been waiting for it; there is a neutral look on Stan’s face that Ford doesn’t recognise, and immediately doesn’t like. 

“So,” he begins, and Ford braces himself hard for what he knows is coming. “You’re not my brother.” 

It’s a statement, not a question, and it  _ hurts _ , far more than Ford expects it to. A lump lodges itself in his throat, makes it hard to answer, hard to breathe. Stan seems to be waiting for a response, though, so he does his best to clear his throat around the well of emotion. 

“I  _ am _ your brother. You’re… We’re  _ twins _ , Stanley.” The desperation that he hadn’t allowed in front of the children surges forth now, unbidden. Ford finds himself gripping his own hands tightly behind his back, staring at Stan, trying to see any sort of spark in his gaze, recognition in his face. 

It doesn’t come. “I don’t remember you.” The ‘I would remember my own brother’ goes unsaid, but it hangs heavy in the air in the space between them regardless. Ford just barely keeps himself from wincing at the implication. He deserves this, he is well aware. Stanley… Stanley doesn’t deserve everything he was put through. Ford knows that now.

“Stanley…” Ford takes a step towards him, and Stan immediately steps back. This time, Ford does wince. He reaches out, gestures towards the couch that has been doubling as his own sleeping quarters since Stan brought him back through the Portal. “Let me explain. You--” The lump is back, and he tries to swallow around it. “You have every right to hate me, but… please. Let me at least try to explain.”

Hesitant and cautious, Stan stares at him in the half-light provided by the small lamp on the desk. And then, without warning, he jerks himself towards the sofa and unceremoniously drops himself onto it. “Explain,” is all he says, and Ford wants to sob with relief.

He refrains, but only barely. Instead of sobbing, he slowly lowers himself onto the opposite end of the couch, his body angled towards Stan’s. And he explains. He starts from the beginning, from their childhood, digging out the old photograph of the two of them standing proudly in front of the Stan O’War from the inner pocket of his coat. He hands it over without looking at Stan. 

He explains how they had a plan to get away from Glass Shard Beach together, how that plan had slowly fallen apart as they’d grown older. He explains how he had built the perpetual motion machine, how widely and well-received it had been… and how he’d been aware that Stan had felt like he was being left behind, but he’d ignored it, because there had been so much brightness in his future that he’d forgotten about Stan in the interim. He explains how Stan had broken the machine, how he and their father had overreacted. How Stan had been on his own until Ford had called him to his little shack in Gravity Falls, Oregon. How they’d gotten into an argument, how Ford had been so locked inside his own paranoia that he hadn’t even been able to trust his own brother to stay with him while he attempted to find a way to get rid of Bill. How he’d been knocked into the portal. How Stan had spent thirty long years trying to get him back, and how Ford had reacted when it had finally managed to work. 

Every time Ford manages to glance up, he finds Stan staring past him, a vaguely blank look on his face, and Ford can’t look at him for long before he goes back to staring at a stain on the floor that had been previously hidden by Experiment 78. He’s afraid, but he’s not sure what he’s more afraid of: Stan not remembering him at all, or Stan remembering him and subsequently hating him again for all the mistakes he had made in the past. 

It’s late when Ford finally winds down, when he finishes explaining, when he ends with Weirdmageddon and the Fearamid and Stan’s sacrifice for his brother, for the kids, for Gravity Falls, for the world as they knew it. His voice is hoarse, both from emotion and from the amount of talking he’s done, and he clears his throat quietly and rubs at his eyes with palms sticky with sweat. There is salt dried at the corners of his eyes. He hates that it’s there. 

And then there are arms around him, the couch dipping beside him, and he drops his hands with a sharp, quiet intake of breath. Stan is holding onto him, his grip tight and his arms a firm presence, and Ford doesn’t know what’s going on but he doesn’t care because he can feel Stanley trembling against him. So he shifts, pressing into the embrace, and drapes his arms around Stan in return. 

“Ford,” Stan whispers, his voice watery and broken, and Ford can only nod and hold on even tighter. “Fuck you,” he adds without venom, shoving his face into Ford’s neck. Ford shivers at the cool metal of Stan’s glasses, winces at the pinch of the hard glass against his skin. He nudges Stan’s glasses from his face, places them carefully on the arm of the couch, and then immediately tugs him into the embrace again. Stan goes willingly, whispering Ford’s name a second time, asking him how the hell he could have forgotten him. Ford whispers back that it’s okay, that it isn’t his fault. Because it isn’t, it wasn’t. 

It takes a few long minutes for Stan to stop trembling, and a few minutes more for him to gently push Ford back, so that they are lying side-by-side on the couch. It’s cramped and a little awkward, but Ford can barely sense it, because for the first time in more than forty years, he has Stan in his arms, with nothing in the way of their relationship. Weirdmaggedon took its toll on everyone; Stan falls asleep there in his arms, and Ford follows him not long after. 

In the coming days, in the coming months, they will both have nightmares. They will share a bed so that when the nightmares come, there is always someone to fend them off. But for tonight, they are pressed tightly together, and there is nothing that can hurt them. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope y'all liked it! Remember, kudos and comments are love!


End file.
